Theme and plugin requests

We’re thinking it’s time to start getting seriously into BP, but we’d like to get a feel for what people are really after, so we’re asking for theme & plugin requests so that we can develop them for you

We’ll release some for free on http://wpmudev.org and some on the premium site – and we’d love to hear what you’d like us to make you!

It’s a bit of an experiment (usually we try to pick up what people want from general forum posts, email requests etc.) but if it works out we’ll definitely do it again. So would love to hear your thoughts on the concept too.

That’s great news! I’ve always been so thankful for WPMU DEV when building MU based sites, its brilliant your getting excited about BP and helping us out!

Something that’s currently being discussed is a Facebook Connect plugin, I’m sure you will have read the thread already. I pinpointed some key features I’d like to see from such a plugin (http://is.gd/kC9C), and I’m getting some feedback on those ideas at the moment. The community seems willing to chip-in on paying for this, and I’m eager to see it remain open source thereafter.

A real beast of a component would be ‘Live Chat’, much like the IM features seen on Facebook/Bebo at the moment. At least making a start on that and keeping it open source for people to add to would be great?! I can imagine you charging for that, but I’m sure people using BuddyPress at the moment would chip-in to see it built; but I’m guessing you’d want continuous revenue from such a component!

Also, until it becomes core, a dedicated ‘Invite Friends’ component would be great, where you could insert your email address (Gmail, Hotmail etc) and invite all of your friends that way.

We’ve got two themes going on in bp. The ‘blog’ theme and the member theme. bp ships with a home theme that is a widget framework. It serves as the theme that many activate as their ‘blog’ theme to run on the wpmu root blog. You’ll also see lots of standard WP themes being used and adapted to serving as the root blog theme. Lots of wonderful examples of what is possible are available.

Developing new member themes seem to be the challenging area that needs attention. Since the gurus are asking, I suggest you folks do some heavy lifting in that area.

Standard WP themes could also use a touch of bp flavor. Integration of some bp features into a WP theme might be nice. bp flavors such as:

- Profile and avatar support in blog posts, comments. When viewing an author or comment stream many times I’d like to leave a quick private note to somebody. Within the avatar/name/vcard block perhaps a link to send them a bp private message.

- Use of bp’s Groups for blog orientation. By orientation I mean that the blog theme should be constructed with multiple users in mind. As a given and not an afterthought. That the blog is a cooperative endeavor and should reflect that fact.

- Integration of the wire component as an ‘aside’ tool. General, quick comment area for members not tied to specific posts.

- A blog is also an individual’s way of expressing themselves yes. However in bp people have friends, belong to groups and have a personal activity stream. Perhaps some way of including that without launching the entire member profile for somebody would be nice.

I guess all my suggestions have to do with integrating useful bp features into standard WP themes so that the theme reflects to visitors they are just not in WP’s version of Kansas anymore. Which they aren’t. We don’t have to hit people over the head with social networking features, just include them in a natural and appropriate manner.

Burt, I think I’m picking up what you’re putting down, and I plan on integrating much of what you’re mentioning. Trying to bring MU and bbPress underneath the BuddyPress umbrella a little more really, to open up some of the core abilities and release them to the integrated apps.

I wish I understood the ixr more, because I think the purpose of it is to not have to deeply integrate the components, but rather build bridge plugins to turn on only the functions we would need, much like you did with the bbGroups.

AMEN to everything mentioned above (by the way: cool, that you guys are picking it up, james)

One thing that comes to my mind:

The “Upgrades”-Plugin you already have would be nice to be extended… So that people in BP can get extra stuff with the credits. For my purpose it would be great if member could buy credits but also earn them with their activities for the greater good (or something ). The credits “interface” would also be accessible from frontend in BP (because alot of BP-Hosts will try to keep members without blogs from the backend).

@johnjamesjacoby, I see the same thing John. The integration of ‘standalone’ apps such as blogs and forums under the bp umbrella using XMLRPC if necessary. We can’t rely on the possibility of deep integration of apps to be a given. Why should we even assume that it is possible? With that mechanism we don’t have to. bbpress and wp have full blown interfaces to their respective guts.

It’s possible to even completely decouple bbpress, wpmu blogs and bp so that only user identity is the common thread throughout each that ties the apps together. The implication is that they don’t *have* to run on the same server or be managed by the same site admin. I have ideas about that but I’m already way out of the zone and tone of this thread.

Photo/media stuff is definitely interesting – and we’re keen to look at it, although having already developed inboxes / friends listings / communities etc. for WPMU to see them all surpassed by BP makes me a little tentative to develop something that Automa*tic are going to do (possibly, ahem, better) shortly

Photo albums and status updates are going to be integrated into the core, so anything on those lines would be redundant. Privacy, even though I would love some plugins in the short term to handle it better, is also going to be in the core, so that is a bit redundant as well.

I guess my only wishlist up and above some of the ideas here would be BP running with the multi-DB plugin (Maybe getting replication working as well *cough*)

As a premium supporter, we appreciate what you guys do James for the entire suite of communities.

how about a plugin that would allow a user to join group(s) when they signup for their account, rather than after.. Ideally the group selection being an Admin Sponsored Group. That way zillions of groups aren’t shown in the selection list.

I think having a default hidden user group for registered users is a good idea. This way you could put *bad* members into a hidden *bozo* group and maybe restrict their abilities based on preset group permissions? Bozo’s can’t instant message or upload avatars, for example.

I would like to see the ability for users to be able to personalise their profile page, with this I mean them being able to pick ‘boxes’ with content (say, my groups, my friends, online friends, personal info, etc sort of like widgets, but picked by each user) and place them on their profile, perhaps able to move them around ajax style (and hide/minimize/maximize them) like in the WordPress backend dashboard.

i would like to see member themes changeable on a per user basis so they can have their own skins as such, and also allow them to create their own, i think we need to collaborate as to what the user can change and what they cant, it would be nice to allow them selected css,

i would also like to see the modules changeable in a drag and drop kinda way and allow the user to choose which modules they do or do not want to use,

im interested in a love plugin which allows users to post a little love icon with thier wire posts but i could also see this being extended to comments, i have made a request for it before but got no replies so visit my profile for the topic,

last fm integration would be majorly cool i think, as it would rival many of the ‘apps’ out there on the larger social networks. building on this area of things you could also add twitter, etc. so i guess what im trying to say is focus on the users ‘lifestream’

when the user logs in i want them to go straight to the dashboard but the dashboard should have things like pending freind requests, groups to join, latest comments, profile stats (incuding who visited thier profile), options and such like, and an aggregation of thier freinds activity updates. when i visit my site i dont care what user a,b and c are up to im just interested in what my freinds x,y and z did recently,

so it would be very useful to have these widgets in the dashboard, that way everything is centralised for the user to do things,

another thing i thought would be useful was profile privacy options, allowing members to discriminate based on age eg, users over X cant visit profiles for members under 18 or whatever, maybe allow the user to choose who can contact them / add them etc,

also have a block ability and mark as spam,

the profile itself should have 3 modes of operation, public – everything is displayed, semi private, freinds can see full profile, non freinds can see selected modules / different modules only, and fully private – the user must be freinds to see anything other than name, age and city/ country.

i have used the profile sidebar plugin, but as of yet there are no freinds or group widgets for it, i would like to see these with a good amount of configurability options allowing for things like top freinds, other half etc

sorry for such a long post but i would like to see these features implemented as i think they would greatly enhance buddypress!!

We’ve made some serious notes and are starting work on some of the larger ones, but here’s one to get you started – a nice, simple, configurable Terms of Service plugin freely available at our BuddyPress Plugins page over at WPMU DEV:

Can you withdraw my rights to use the plugin if I piss you off? The plugin might be freely available but that doesn’t mean I have any rights at all. Can I modify this for my personal use? Can I distribute a fixed version to my friends?

Copyright is a form of intellectual property which gives the creator of an original work exclusive rights for a certain time period in relation to that work, including its publication, distribution and adaptation; after which time the work is said to enter the public domain. […]

This means I can’t modify, adapt or distribute something that simply has Copyright stamped on it. That’s what a copyright is for. To restrict the rights of others.

I guess I’m asking why it doesn’t have a GPL, or something similar, license?